1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to a vehicular power transmitting system, and more particularly to an improvement of the system for reducing its size.
2. Discussion of Prior Art
There is known a vehicular power transmitting system including (a) a transmission portion constituting a part of a power transmitting path, and (b) an electrically controlled differential portion connected to the electric motor, and having a differential state between rotating speeds of its input and output shafts, which differential state is controllable according to a change of an operating speed of the electric motor. There have been proposed some techniques for reducing the size of such a vehicular power transmitting system. JP-2006-94680 A discloses an example of this vehicular power transmitting system, wherein a stator of the electric motor is mounted on a casing via a spacer, and a rotating shaft of a rotary device of the electric motor is supported rotatably by a support wall fixed to the casing. The spacer and the support wall are formed integrally, so that the spacer can be fixed to the casing by fixing the support wall to the casing. Thus, the vehicular power transmitting system does not require a structure for fixing the spacer to the casing, separately from the support wall, whereby the system can be made small-sized.
Although the prior art techniques described above permit some degree of reduction of the size of the vehicular power transmitting system, the size reduction is limited. In particular, the prior art techniques suffer from difficulty to effectively reduce the overall length of the power transmitting system, namely, its dimension in the axial direction of the input and output shafts. In this respect, there has been a need of developing a vehicular power transmitting system which is constructed to minimize its overall length.